BAROMETER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 893, 14 September 1956, Page 16

BAROMETER

FAIR TO FINE: "The Ladykillers." FAIR: "World in My Corner." FAIR:. "The Littlest Outlaw."

(continued from previous page) a fine attention to detail throughout, imaginative lighting and camerawork (by Otto Heller) create a remarkable atmosphere, and wonderfully effective use is made of music. The film is another triumph for Mr. Guinness, though I think it’s an even greater one for Katie Johnson. I like to recall especially the quiet perfection of her drive to the station to pick up the loot. It seems to me rather interesting and typical that Ealing Studios, a typical British institution, should make comeGies about murder, though it would never make one about sex. It’s always a bit of an effort for me to find murder funny-it’s one respect, I’m told, in which I’m not yet civilised-and while The Ladykillers is far too extravagant and Goonlike and well done for me to mount a moral high horse about it, I must admit that, already feeling uneasy, I found parts of the liquidation sequence too heartless for my taste. I think this is because, in spite of the extraordinary gang, the film never quite parts company from reality-the characters remain in a measure recognisably human -nor has it at this point the wit and polish of Kind Hearts and Coronets. This may, however, be a quite individual reaction. Would the effect, I wonder, have been different if the story of the gang had been told as a flashback, with its disappearance already revealed to the police by Mrs. Wilberforce at the beginning rather than at the end?